come only the more spiritual, and hope lives on even in captivity. It was indeed the voice of prophecy and the belief in its fulfilment that sustained the captives in Babylon, and stimulated the pious under Ezra and Nehemiah to return to their native land, and there, cured finally of idolatry, to set up the worship of God with punctilious regard to the precepts of the old law, which, during their prosperity, had been slighted.

It is

Such is the view presented in the Biblical books. It involves a plan or scheme of history of a sort. a record of a religious movement proceeding in close connection with certain alleged historical occurrences, which to the Biblical writers are of prime significance; so that in their estimation the different stadia in the religious advance are marked by definite events in the national life. I have said that the narrative contained in the Biblical books is ostensibly consistent and of one tenor; and the proof of this is the fact that till recently no one thought that any other account could be derived from these books of what the various writers unanimously meant to represent. Indeed those who in modern times think they have proved that the course of the history was different, do not deny that the Biblical books, as they lie before us, give the account which has just been sketched. What they maintain is, that the scheme of the Biblical writers is an afterthought, which by a process of manipulation of older documents, and by a systematic representation of earlier events in the light of much later times, has been made to appear as if it were the original and genuine development; and they think they are able, by separating the early from the late constituents of the writings, and by a legitimate process of criticism, to prove from the Biblical documents themselves,

Biblical Theory criticised.

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that the history and the religious movement had quite a different course.

On purely literary and scientific grounds we cannot at the outset refuse to entertain such a supposition. The books of the Old Testament lie before us as so many literary compositions, and we cannot in advance claim for them such authority as will bar any legitimate inquiry into their origin, and any legitimate criticism of them as literary productions. It is in itself a legitimate supposition that the writers of the Old Testament books, living and moving in a narrow world of their own, took a circumscribed view of their national history, and in a simple unscientific age saw marvels where modern writers would see only natural occurrences. It is also quite conceivable that Hebrew writers of history, like other historians, had their views of past occurrences coloured by the medium of their own time through which they regarded them, and at a comparatively late time framed a theory of their past history, in accordance with what succeeding events led them to believe it must have been. And finally, it is conceivable that such late writers should for the first time have set themselves to put down an account of early events from their own standpoint, or have touched up older documents in order to make them square with their own conceptions. Whether all this was indeed the case must of course be proved before we accept it; in the meantime we cannot refuse to look at it as a hypothetical account of the matter. Nor need we wonder if, in an age like the present, when the demand is made in every department of investigation for scientific processes and strict verification of facts, the theory of the Biblical writers should be challenged to submit itself to the scrutiny of nineteenth-century examination. Neither need

we wonder if men who are trained in the methods of modern historical research, and who have made the religions of the world a subject of special study, have sought to frame a theory of Israel's history in accordance with what they regard as established scientific principles. Of course it will be required of the modern theory that it give a better account of all the facts of the case, and present on the whole a more consistent and credible explanation of the things which are not matters of dispute.

We shall have occasion in the sequel to consider the main points of the theory that has been put forward in opposition to the Biblical one. In detail there are variations in the views held by different writers; but in a general way the modern theory may be stated as follows: A number of wandering Hebrew tribes came from the desert and found a settlement in Canaan. Like the races around them they had their national God, Jahaveh,1 who was to them very much what Chemosh was to Moab or

1 In using this name for the first time, I must make a brief explanation. It is now universally admitted that the traditional pronunciation, Jehovah, which appears in our English Bible, is a mistake. By the time the vowel-points were supplied to the Hebrew Bible the Jews had acquired the habit of saying Adhonai, the LORD, wherever the sacred tetragrammaton (JHVH) occurred, and to guide to this reading they wrote the vowels of the name Adhonai along with the consonants of the unpronounced name. Taken as a Hebrew name, and vocalised after the analogy of other words of similar formation, the name should in all probability be pronounced Yahaveh or Yahveh. The objection to the use of the form Yahveh or Jahveh is, that the h in the middle is apt to become quiescent, and the word to be pronounced Ya-veh, which is a mistake. I may add that whatever objections there may be against deviating from a pronunciation which is invested with sacred associations, there are certain advantages, which will appear as we proceed, in keeping, in a discussion like the present, as near as possible to the original. In quotations from modern writers the spelling of the respective authors is retained. The origin and the significance of the name are considered in the sequel (chap. xi.)

Modern Theory stated.

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Milcom to Ammon; and they possessed certain traditions, variously accounted for, of their origin and of the manner in which He had become their national God: but their religious faith and religious observances were very much of the same kind as those of the nations around them. Particularly from the Canaanites, among whom they settled, and whom they gradually assimilated or absorbed, they adopted many religious customs and beliefs,-appropriating their sacred places, making pilgrimages to their sacred tombs, and ascribing to their own ancestors the honours which were paid by the Canaanites to local heroes departed. Custom grew into law, legend was made into history, and at the time when we have the first authentic records of them, they are practising the rites of a worship which had grown up in the way indicated, with conceptions of their national God similar to the beliefs of the neighbouring nations regarding their gods. The Biblical books which relate the history up to the eighth century B.C. did not exist in anything like their present form till long after the events; and it is only from early pieces contained in them, or by various inferences, that we can get a true account of the history of that time, the books in their present form being manipulated by later hands, and exhibiting a projection of later ideas into past times. But by the eighth century we have compositions belonging to that century itself, and from that time onwards literary works come to our aid for the understanding of the history. It was to the prophets that the purification of the religious conceptions of Israel was due. They first perceived and taught the people a higher truth, and by them the ethic monotheism of the Old Testament was developed. Before their time "the nation had been the ideal of religion

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in actual realisation; the prophets confronted the nation. with an ideal to which it did not correspond. Then to bridge over this interval the abstract ideal was framed into a law, and to this law the nation was to be conformed." In this way the code of Deuteronomy was prepared some short time before the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah, when it is said to have been discovered in the Temple. This code of law does not therefore belong to the age of Moses, though it is represented as coming from him, to give it higher sanction. It was, in fact, the attempt to frame a norm for the guid ance of Israel in the truth which the prophets had taught. But it had an effect other than its framers had anticipated; it substituted for the free living voice of God speaking through His prophets, the voice of a dead law; and so, without meaning it, the prophets became "the spiritual destroyers of the old Israel."2 Law, therefore, was the outcome of prophecy, not its antecedent; and it found its ultimate development in the Levitical code of Ezra, which was the starting-point of modern Judaism.

Without entering now into any discussion of the points here raised, we may observe that this theory professes to expound the history of Israel according to the principle of a continuous natural development, showing the gradual expansion of the religious idea from the narrowest conceptions of nationalism, or even animism, to that of a pure monotheism, and the rise of religious institutions from mere natural custom, often the most superstitious, to codified law with divine sanctions. Stade, a distinguished advocate of the modern view, says we must at the outset regard the religion of old Israel as

1 Wellhausen, Hist. of Israel, p. 491.

3 Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. i. pp. 8, 9.

2 Ibid.

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